The average loss rate for conventional mortgages rose from less than 10% pre-crisis to more than 30% during the crisis, reaching and sustaining greater than 40% post-crisis. Using a novel database that contains the components of mortgage losses, we identify a regime shift in loss severities...

A key feature of the 2007 financial crisis is that for some classes of securities trade has practically ceased. And where trade has occurred, it appears that market prices are well below their intrinsic values. This seems especially true for those securities where the payoff streams are...

This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of structured finance asset-backed securities collateralized debt obligations (SF ABS CDOs), the subset of CDOs that traded on the ABS CDO desks at the major investment banks and were a major contributor to the global financial panic of August 2007....

We examine the role of asset-backed security collateralized debt obligations (ABS CDOs) as a primary catalyst for the financial crisis. We show how ABS CDOs became the main investment vehicle for the riskiest investment-grade securities in the private-label mortgage market. We estimate a final...